The Bee Bench › Quick Reference Chart

📐 Quick Reference Chart

The numbers you end up looking up over and over. One page, printable, no scrolling through a book.

Hive dimensions

Bee space	3/8 inch (9.5 mm). Any smaller and they fill it with propolis; any larger and they build burr comb in it.
Frames per box	10 standard, or 8 in a narrow box. Nine frames in a 10-frame super draws fatter comb and uncaps easier.
Deep frame of honey	About 7 lb. A medium runs about 5 lb, a shallow about 3.5 lb.

Temperatures

Brood incubation	91–97 °F (33–36 °C), held there by heater bees.
Winter cluster forms	Below about 64 °F (18 °C). Foraging and water collection stop.
Flying weather	Roughly 55 °F and up, and not raining.
Cleansing flights	Around 50 °F on a sunny winter day.

The colony

Healthy brood pattern	A solid rainbow — brood in the middle, an arc of pollen above it, honey over the top. 6 to 17% empty cells is normal.
Drones at peak	About 5% of the adult bees in late spring and early summer. Far more than that in late summer suggests a drone-laying queen.
Drone comb, left natural	About 17–20% of the comb, roughly two frames in a 10-frame box. Usually along the bottom and sides, not the middle.
Queen mating	One to three mating flights, averaging about 12 drones (range 10–20). Mating flights and swarms are the only times she leaves.
Swarm season here	Peaks mid-May into mid-July. A colony starts making drones at around 4,000 bees.

Development

Queen	Egg 3 days, larva 5½, capped 7½ — emerges day 16. Mates around day 20–24, laying by about day 28.
Worker	Egg 3 days, larva 6, capped 12 — emerges day 21.
Drone	Egg 3 days, larva 6½, capped 14½ — emerges day 24. Sexually mature around day 38.
Varroa	Enters the cell just before capping. Mother mite plus daughters emerge with the bee. Prefers drone brood strongly.

Inspection

Brood frames to check	At least four per box. You learn very little from the fifth that you didn't from the fourth.
Frame replacement	The two oldest frames per box each year — but never pull more than four frames from a hive at once.
Good resource flow	10 to 20 bees a minute coming in with full pollen baskets.
Pollen / bee bread	One to two frames per brood box is ideal for brood rearing.

Feed and stores

Sugar syrup	1:1 in spring to stimulate laying; 2:1 in fall to build stores. Plain white granulated sugar only.
Winter stores here	70 to 90 lb going into winter for south-central Pennsylvania.
When they stop taking syrup	Once nights sit below about 50 °F. After that it's fondant or dry sugar.

Honey

Moisture	Capped at about 17–19% water. Above roughly 18.6% it can ferment on the shelf.
Weight and volume	About 11.85 lb per gallon, or roughly 12 lb — honey is about 40% heavier than water.
Grade A moisture limit	18.6% water for USDA Grade A.

Trouble signs

AFB rope test	Toothpick into a suspect cell, twist, pull. If it ropes out 2 cm or more, suspect American foulbrood. Beltsville tests samples free.
Guanine crystals	Small white crystals on the ceilings of brood cells mean high varroa levels.
K-wing	Wings held out at odd angles — tracheal mites, or general virus load.
Multiple eggs per cell	Laying workers, if it persists. A brand-new queen sometimes doubles up for a few days and then sorts herself out.

Numbers are typical, not universal. Development times shift a little with temperature, stores vary with your winter, and every rule here has a colony somewhere that ignores it. Use them as the shape of normal, so the abnormal stands out.